


The Fire in my Soul

by AwesomeEyeroll



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 21:55:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeEyeroll/pseuds/AwesomeEyeroll
Summary: Set sometimes after the end of MOBY, Claire reflects on falling in love with Jamie.





	The Fire in my Soul

The heat of him. That’s what I remember most about that moment. The white hot feel of his skin under my fingers as I examined his arm. I was cold to the bone and yet when I touched him his heat was catching. In that moment he warmed me better than any fire could have. Just to be close to him was to feel the thaw in my frozen bones, to feel something melt in my very core. I didn’t know it at the time but I was irrevocably changed in that moment. Almost like the heat of him melted me and I reformed into someone else. Into Claire Fraser.

I fought it, or at least I thought I did. I can see now that I was lost to my old life in that very moment and all that I thought I was or wanted had been dashed away. But I had tried… Guilt, I suppose, and obligation. I had given a vow to Frank and I had loved him, I wanted to honour that, but all that was nothing from the moment I laid my hands on that scorching hot skin, from the moment those blue cat eyes met mine. But to admit that to myself, even for many years after my choice was made… I hadn’t quite been able to make my peace with the extent to which I was lost in those very first moments. 

But I should have known. How safe I felt wrapped in his arms on that indeterminable ride to Leoch, how in that moment of conflict in the glade after the red coat ambush when he cornered me trying to run, I had wanted nothing more than to lean forward and kiss him. To taste him. I should have known, I should have admitted it to myself. But how could I? I wasn’t supposed to be there, or so I thought at the time. I l know differently now. 

When I look back I laugh at myself. The manufactured meetings in the corridors of the castles or out at the stables. The way that we always seemed to find ourselves sat together at meals. The way we rode that little bit too close to each other whenever he accompanied me anywhere, knees jostling. I’d tried to chalk it up to good old fashioned lust or the fact that I needed a protector and he was as good as any, but it simply wasn’t true. I believed in love, I thought I had experienced it, but I had never thought until that moment in the crofter’s cottage that it was possible for a soul to call to another, to yearn so. But it is possible. And I think, now, that that was what brought me there, to that time and that place out of all others. My soul called to his across time and space and he answered in kind. 

My marriage to him had been more than I could have ever hoped or dreamed for. Again, I fought it, tried to deny my feelings, and succeeded. For a while. I convinced myself again that the connection between us was purely physical, that it was gratefulness on my part for saving me from Randall and the Tolbooth. But then when he rescued me from Fort William, I knew. I let myself admit my feelings. I understood what it had cost him to go there. I knew what he had suffered within those walls, what would have awaited him had be not been successful in freeing me. And he had risked all that for me. For the vow he had given me. Even after he beat me and I was so angry I could barely see straight, when for a silver penny I thought I could have cut his throat and made a run for Craigh na Dun without so much as a backward glance, I knew. I saw him flailing between the man he thought he should be and the one he truly was. I saw him struggle to find the justice he wanted to meet and that which duty demanded. And I saw his terror, the fear of the place and the man that held me completely consumed by the fear he felt for me. When we came together then, there was no more fighting. No more denying. Although the declarations did not come until after, we laid ourselves bare to each other then. I was his and he was mine and that is all that there would ever be. 

In the years that we were apart, when I thought him dead and he thought me lost to him forever, my soul had never been my own again. It had always been reaching, searching. Brianna had lessened that tug, anchored my soul to the life I was living, but it was never fully mine. The gnawing hollow in my stomach where I always fancied my soul to be never went away. I was never at peace again. Not until I came back. Until I found him again. When our eyes locked in that Print Shop in Edinburgh. When I put my hands on him again and felt the heat of him. 

And I watch him now. He is still so tall and strong. His back does not slouch and there is no sign of frailty in him yet. Yet the years have touched him. There is grey among that fiery red, the lines of his face etched deeper. He wears spectacles, as he sits and whittles whatever toy he is currently making for one of the children. But when I touch him he still burns. He is still that boy on the cusp of manhood sitting on a stool, his jaw clenched in pain. I still reach for his body as well as his soul. War is coming and this idyll will not last. We will leave the Ridge once more and he will do his duty. But this time I will not leave him. I cannot live without my soul.


End file.
